Julie Orringer on Writing About Real-Life Superheroes
From the Bookable Podcast with Author Amanda Stern
Bookable features established authors and emerging talent in conversation with host and author Amanda Stern, perhaps best known for creating the Happy Ending Music & Reading Series at New York’s famous Joe’s Pub and Symphony Space. With an immersive sound experience designed around each episode, Bookable takes you on an audio exploration of a book—usually new, sometimes classic and occasionally obscure but always worth knowing about.
Comic book franchises are all about the allure of a good superhero, but real-life superheroes are rare. Author Julie Orringer writes about one in The Flight Portfolio. Varian Fry saved thousands of lives during World War II—in this brilliant work of historical fiction, Orringer tells his remarkable story. Packed with jeweler’s attention to detail, a memorable cast of sidekicks, hate-worthy villains, forbidden romance and harrowing accounts of dangerous secret operations, The Flight Portfolio might be the most amazing story you’ve never heard—until now!
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Julie Orringer is the author of two award-winning books: The Invisible Bridge, a novel, and the short-story collection How to Breathe Underwater, both New York Times Notable Books. She is the winner of the Paris Review‘s Plimpton Prize and the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. She lives in Brooklyn.
